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Home buyers hoping for new construction are in luck—the most brand-new, single-family houses have hit the market since the Great Recession.
The number of these never-been-lived-in abodes, 795,000, jumped 7.7% from 2016 to 2017, according to the U.S. Census Bureau report on the 2017 Characteristics of New Housing. The median square footage was up ever so slightly as well, to 2,426 from 2,422 the year before.
“It’s good that there’s more construction, but there’s still plenty of room for more building,” says Chief Economist Danielle Hale of realtor.com®. “Builders are obviously catering more toward wealthier buyers. But we know that there’s plenty of housing demand on the more affordable end.”
These larger homes tend to be more expensive than older, existing residences, so they tend to attract older buyers who have owned a home before. For example, the median price of a new home was $312,400 in April—compared with $257,900 for an existing home. That’s 21.1% more. That’s typically because of high land, construction labor, and materials costs.
The overwhelming majority of these brand-new homes had multiple bedrooms: 45% had three beds, while 46% had four beds. That’s the same as the previous year. About 37% of the houses had three or more bathrooms, while 29% had 2.5 bathrooms and 31% had two bathrooms. The rest had one and a half.
About 65% of these brand-new homes had two-car garages, and about a quarter of them had full or partial basements.
Newly built abodes were also more likely to be part of a homeowners association than not. About 487,000 of these new abodes were in HOAs—so good luck avoiding those fees. That may be because new construction is more likely to take place in the suburbs and beyond, where there is more land available and where costs are lower than in the suburbs.
“Construction is slowly shifting back from the core of metro areas to the outer suburbs. It’s because that’s where your normal buyers look for houses,” says Issi Romem, chief economist at BuildZoom, an online homebuilding and remodeling marketplace. “They’re going to be larger than the homes you’ll find in the center of town.”
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